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Politics : Manmade Global Warming, A hoax? A Scam? or a Doomsday Cult? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJB who wrote (2333)	3/5/2011 12:21:48 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4326

Why do those people think they need heat inside their cars? Are they sissies?

To: FJB who wrote (2333)	3/5/2011 8:36:23 PM
From: RinConRon	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4326

Pardon the pun, but I can't wait for the month when they only sell 12 Volts.

To: FJB who wrote (2333)	3/9/2011 10:08:35 AM
From: joseffy	2 Recommendations Respond to of 4326

What A Clean Energy Future Looks Like – An Absolute Nightmare papundits.wordpress.com

To: FJB who wrote (2333)	3/11/2011 3:01:46 PM
From: joseffy	3 Recommendations Respond to of 4326

For Every Green Job, Four Other are Lost (UK) Mar 2nd, 2011 offshorewind.biz A study of renewable energy in Scotland shows that for every job created in the alternative energy sector, almost four jobs are lost in the rest of the economy. We’ve seen this movie before. Not only has the sun set on the British Empire, but the promise of wind apparently is deserting it as well. A new study called “Worth The Candle?” by the consulting firm Verso Economics confirms the experience of Spain and other countries: The creation of “green” jobs destroys other jobs through the diversion of resources and the denial of abundant sources of fossil fuel energy. The economic candle in the U.K. is being blown out by wind power. The Verso study finds that after the annual diversion of some 330 million British pounds from the rest of the U.K. economy, the result has been the destruction of 3.7 jobs for every “green” job created. The study concludes that the “policy to promote renewable energy in the U.K. has an opportunity cost of 10,000 direct jobs in 2009-10 and 1,200 jobs in Scotland.” So British taxpayers, as is the case here in the U.S., are being forced to subsidize a net loss of jobs in a struggling economy. “There’s a big emphasis in Scotland on the economic opportunity of investing in renewable energy,” says study co-author and Verso research director Richard Walsh. “Whatever the environmental merits, we have shown that the case for green jobs just doesn’t stack up.” Again, it’s been shown that wind energy can’t hold a candle to other more traditional and more reliable forms of energy. “The Scottish renewable sector is very reliant on subsidies from the rest of the U.K.,” co-author Tom Miers adds. “Without the U.K.-wide framework, it would be very difficult to sustain the main policy tolls to promote this industry.” As here, only continuous subsidies and redistribution of resources to an unproductive and uncompetitive source of energy keeps the alternative energy industry alive, politically and economically. As the Telegraph’s James Delingpole reminds us in reporting the results of the British study, “wind and solar power have proved a disaster in Germany, Denmark and Spain (where Dr. Gabriel Calzada Alvarez calculated that for every ‘green job,’ the country had destroyed 2.2 jobs in the real economy).” If these numbers were extrapolated to America, instead of a touted 3 million-job gain from alternative energy, we should expect the loss of at least 6.6 million jobs in other industries. Calzada noted that these are direct job losses. “The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to high energy prices,” he said in an interview. Under a target agreed to with the European Union, Britain is committed to generating nearly a third of its electricity from renewable sources, mainly through building thousands of wind turbines. The Daily Mail’s Christopher Booker calls the push for alternative energy “the greatest scam of our age,” a statement we find hard to disagree with. Booker reports that in Britain, “To keep our homes warm we were having to import vast amounts of power from nuclear reactors in France.” He notes that the total usable output from Britain’s 3,500 turbines is no more than a single conventional power plant, which is necessary as a backup when the wind doesn’t blow. These wind turbines are so expensive, according to Booker, that Holland recently became the first country in Europe to abandon its EU renewable-energy target, saving billions of euros. Despite the evidence in country after country, we intend to repeat their mistake. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, architects of the Obama administration’s economy-killing war on fossil fuels, announced on Monday that the development of offshore wind farms would be fast-tracked, with a goal of issuing leases off four Atlantic Coast states by the end of the year. Tilting at windmills will not create jobs, make us energy-independent or save the earth. (investors) Source: investors, March 02, 2011; Image: Getty Images

To: FJB who wrote (2333)	3/17/2011 9:37:45 AM
From: joseffy	4 Recommendations Respond to of 4326

How Washington Ruined Your Washing Machine ............................................................ The top-loading washer continues to disappear, thanks to the usual nanny state suspects. By SAM KAZMAN MARCH 17, 2011 online.wsj.com It might not have been the most stylish, but for decades the top-loading laundry machine was the most affordable and dependable. Now it's ruined—and Americans have politics to thank. In 1996, top-loaders were pretty much the only type of washer around, and they were uniformly high quality. When Consumer Reports tested 18 models, 13 were "excellent" and five were "very good." By 2007, though, not one was excellent and seven out of 21 were "fair" or "poor." This month came the death knell: Consumer Reports simply dismissed all conventional top-loaders as "often mediocre or worse." How's that for progress? The culprit is the federal government's obsession with energy efficiency. Efficiency standards for washing machines aren't as well-known as those for light bulbs, which will effectively prohibit 100-watt incandescent bulbs next year. Nor are they the butt of jokes as low-flow toilets are. But in their quiet destruction of a highly affordable, perfectly satisfactory appliance, washer standards demonstrate the harmfulness of the ever-growing body of efficiency mandates. The federal government first issued energy standards for washers in the early 1990s. When the Department of Energy ratcheted them up a decade later, it was the beginning of the end for top-loaders. Their costlier and harder-to-use rivals—front-loading washing machines—were poised to dominate. Front-loaders meet federal standards more easily than top-loaders. Because they don't fully immerse their laundry loads, they use less hot water and therefore less energy. But, as Americans are increasingly learning, front-loaders are expensive, often have mold problems, and don't let you toss in a wayward sock after they've started. When the Department of Energy began raising the standard, it promised that "consumers will have the same range of clothes washers as they have today," and cleaning ability wouldn't be changed. That's not how it turned out. In 2007, after the more stringent rules had kicked in, Consumer Reports noted that some top-loaders were leaving its test swatches "nearly as dirty as they were before washing." "For the first time in years," CR said, "we can't call any washer a Best Buy." Contrast that with the magazine's 1996 report that, "given warm enough water and a good detergent, any washing machine will get clothes clean." Those were the good old days. View Full Image Getty Images In 2007, only one conventional top-loader was rated "very good." Front-loaders did better, as did a new type of high-efficiency top-loader that lacks a central agitator. But even though these newer types of washers cost about twice as much as conventional top-loaders, overall they didn't clean as well as the 1996 models. The situation got so bad that the Competitive Enterprise Institute started a YouTube protest campaign, "Send Your Underwear to the Undersecretary." With the click of a mouse, you could email your choice of virtual bloomers, boxers or Underoos to the Department of Energy. Several hundred Americans did so, but it wasn't enough to stop Congress from mandating even stronger standards a few months later. Now Congress is at it once again. On March 10, the Senate Energy Committee held hearings on a bill to make efficiency standards even more stringent. The bill claims to implement "national consensus appliance agreements," but those in this consensus are the usual suspects: politicians pushing feel-good generalities, bureaucrats seeking expanded powers, environmentalists with little regard for American pocketbooks, and industries that stand to profit from a de facto ban on low-priced appliances. And there are green tax goodies for manufacturing high-efficiency models—the kind that already give so many tax credits to Whirlpool, for example, that the company will avoid paying taxes on its $619 million profit in 2010. Amazingly, the consensus also includes so-called consumer groups such as the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union. At last week's hearing, the federation touted a survey supposedly showing overwhelming public support for higher efficiency standards. But not a single question in that survey suggested that these standards might compromise performance. Consumers Union, meanwhile, which publishes Consumer Reports, claims that new washers can't be compared to old ones—but that's belied by the very language in its articles. We know that politics can be dirty. Who'd have guessed how literal a truth this is? Mr. Kazman is general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

To: FJB who wrote (2333)	3/19/2011 1:16:47 AM
From: joseffy	2 Recommendations Respond to of 4326

End of a Green Dream A $5.7 billion plan to rebuild a California community college system with an emphasis on green technology falters. By Andrew Barbour 03/17/11 campustechnology.com • It sounded too good to be true -- and it was. An ambitious plan to make Los Angeles Community College District a national leader in green technology and renewable energy appears to be in shambles after an investigative report by the Los Angeles Times has uncovered widespread mismanagement and waste. Larry Eisenberg, the executive director for facilities, planning, and development who oversaw the project, was fired by the LACCD board on March 9. The district's green goals were part of a massive program to rebuild LA's nine-campus community college system. Funding totaling $5.7 billion was secured through a series of bond measures passed between 2001 and 2007. Accounting for interest, the final bill to taxpayers will likely surpass $11 billion. According to a vision developed by Eisenberg, LACCD was to have become a model of clean energy, generating enough wind, solar, and geothermal energy to supply all its electricity needs -- and to sell its surplus. In its six-part investigative series, however, the LA Times showed that both the vision and its implementation were seriously flawed, resulting in waste amounting to nearly $10 million. David Beaulieu, president of the District Academic Senate, also found fault with Eisenberg's plans for sustainable energy projects, calling them "wildly unrealistic" in a Senate newsletter. Among the findings of the LA Times investigative report: • Eisenberg estimated that it would cost $975 million to take all nine campuses off the grid. An engineering consultant believed the final bill would be much higher -- $1.9 billion. As a point of reference, LACCD spent less than $8 million on power bills in 2010. • LACCD had insufficient space on its nine campuses even to house all the generating equipment that would be necessary to provide the district's energy via renewable sources. • Three solar power arrays were scrapped once it became clear that the chosen locations sat on top of seismic faults. • Plans to generate wind power on a large scale neglected the fact that average winds at most of the campuses are too light to generate much power. • The district committed approximately $4 million to develop solar and wind energy projects that never made it beyond blueprints. • At Southwest College, LACCD spent $1.2 million on a parking lot shaded by solar panels, but abandoned the project when it was only half completed.

To: FJB who wrote (2333)	3/22/2011 10:02:15 AM
From: joseffy	3 Recommendations Respond to of 4326

More Climate Disruption Drivel ......................................................... By Anthony J. Sadar and Stanley J. Penkala americanthinker.com It certainly didn't take long for someone, a British academic this time, to couple the tragedy in Japan to the specter of future tsunamis caused by global warming. In 2004, Michael Crichton's State of Fear had the plot line of an extreme environmental group planning to trigger a tsunami using a massive underwater explosion, with the intention of blaming it on man-made climate disruption. Sadly, Japan's tsunami is now being used to stoke the dying embers of climate-change mania. Even before nature's fury ravaged Japan, meteorological mischief was contemplated to awaken the world's interest in climate change. This effort would take the form of coordinated messages using political rhetoric in the media to blame climate change on the industrialized nations of the world. But, after studying the climate-change science "business" for the past thirty years, many of us old-timers see the situation as clear and settled as ever: The global climate changes and humans play a negligible role in that change. The revelations of Climategate and ten years of stagnant global temperatures have produced a decline of public belief in human-induced climate collapse. But, rather than strengthening the foundations of climate science by increasing transparency in data analysis, releasing raw data for third party evaluation, and allowing their hypotheses to be debated in the literature, government-funded scientists instead have decided it's best to just change their method of messaging. The latest tactic is for these man-made global-warming faithful to sharpen their communication skills and tighten their influence on the editorial boards of the environmental journals of record. The intent is to deflect or bury challenges to their climate-catastrophe canon, not defend their hypotheses. Professional communicators and PR experts are assisting with the propaganda, as was evident from activity at the December 2010 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. In a special workshop, speaker after speaker advocated for a more successful war of words, rather than clarifying their application of scientific principles to the study of climate. In addition, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado hosted a seminar last month to help their climate scientists better understand critical communication issues. The speaker was the author of The Republican War on Science. And, the theme of the January 2011 annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society was "Communicating Weather and Climate," which pushed some of the same polished-prose tactics as the AGU gathering. But, authentic unvarnished Truth in Science doesn't need political claptrap or Shinola to convey its message. Integrity in Science requires clearly stated hypotheses, reproducible data and results, and robust statistical interpretations of that information to test each. Science doesn't condone its practitioners in "bending the data" to champion personal beliefs or causes. Calling in the PR flacks is fine when you're trying to sell something using glitz and fast talk, but we hoped that, of all things, science wouldn't be up for sale. In the aftermath of weak decisions and unenforceable agreements at Cancun and Copenhagen, radical environmentalists with their spin doctors in tow are redoubling their efforts to sell the idea of anthropogenic emissions as the only significant agent of climate disruption. Any competing mechanisms that do not buy into that conclusion will simply be dismissed as non-science. To help assure that outcomes from future climate summits tilt the way of "consensus opinion," a UN-type group called the InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (IAP) has stepped up efforts to hawk their brand of science. The IAP, founded in 1993 in New Delhi, is a global network of the national science academies. According to IAP's website, their primary goal is "to help member academies work together to advise citizens and public officials on the scientific aspects of critical global issues." The IAP has more than 100 members, in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. IAP issues statements to the world on such topics as population growth, human reproductive cloning, science education, science and the media, bio-security, evolution, ocean acidification, and of course climate change. Input from a variety of perspectives is valuable to science. However, for the academics of the IAP to speak as the world's authority on science limits other legitimate input. Non-member academies and societies, industry scientists and engineers, and even private consultants, all have their own valuable insights into addressing global challenges. Yet, the IAP strives to exert undue influence on international politics by advancing their version of "facts" (read: certainty of anthropogenic climate disruption) as opposed to "irrational opinion" (read: doubts about the significance of human impacts). Such hubris ultimately does not serve society, or science, well. Nature is the ultimate teacher. Humility and a willingness to go where the data leads are fundamental virtues for an ethical scientist. Arrogance is especially dangerous in the world of science, as it can blind a researcher to the possibility that their favored hypothesis is inconsistent with reality. Unfortunately, humility seems to be an unfamiliar, even unwanted, trait among certain climate scientists. In the "science is settled" group, humility is a sign of weakness, a loss of respect among peers and popularity in the press, and can result in the financial loss of beaucoup bucks in government funding. So it's not surprising that those who have broken ranks from the "blame humans" crowd have been atmospheric scientists and professors of a certain stature. They include, for instance, physicist Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and meteorology professor Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These are scientists who have either retired, who do not rely on government coffers for their research, or who have just been gutsy to pursue an honest quest for knowledge. Science is never "settled." It is a never-ending journey of investigation, with hypotheses proposed, and data gathered and analyzed to prove or disprove them. Climate investigations are particularly complex, because the scope of the test platform is literally global. The assertion by anyone or any group, even in the wake of a terrific natural disaster, that the cause of climate disruption is clearly settled, and due primarily to human action, is and should be characterized as pure political drivel. Anthony J. Sadar is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist and primary author of Environmental Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry (CRC Press/Lewis Publishers 2000). Stanley J. Penkala, Ph.D., is a chemical engineer and President of Air Science Consultants, Inc.

To: FJB who wrote (2333)	3/23/2011 1:57:24 PM
From: joseffy	3 Recommendations Respond to of 4326

Left-wingers criticize corporate welfare until it's for something they like -- for example, "green technology." townhall.com Corporate Welfare by John Stossel 3/23/2011 In America today, the biggest recipients of handouts are not poor people. They're corporations. General Electric CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt is super-close to President Obama. The president named Immelt chairman of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Before that, Immelt was on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. He's a regular companion when Obama travels abroad to hawk American exports. (Why does business need government to do that?) "Jeff Immelt is perhaps the CEO who is most cozy with President Obama," says journalist Tim Carney. "General Electric is structuring their business around where government is going ... high-speed rail, solar, wind. GE is lining up to get what government is handing out." Businesses love to have government as their partner. There's safety in it. Why take chances in a marketplace full of fickle consumers and investors, when you can get secure money and favors from the taxpayers? It's an old story, and free-market advocates as far back as Adam Smith warned against it. Unfortunately, too many people think "free market" means pro-business. It doesn't. Free market means laissez faire -- prohibit force and fraud, but otherwise leave the marketplace alone. No subsidies, no privileges, no arbitrary regulations. Competition is the most effective regulator. Left-wingers criticize corporate welfare until it's for something they like -- for example, "green technology." "The government's going to invest in certain companies to pioneer new technologies. That, I think, is not corporate welfare," says Tamara Draut of the Progressive think-tank Demos. I asked her if business is too dumb to pioneer without government direction. "The private sector will only invest if they know for sure that there is a commercial marketplace." But if everyone wants these products, that should be an incentive for greedy businesses to make them. "Not always," she replied. "But the free market does not know anything unless we all collect our interests and say: This is of national import to us." This is nonsense. How did Apple know we would want iPods, iPhones and iPads? It didn't know with certainty. It took a risk with its own and investors' money. But for some reason, other products and services are different, according to people like Obama and Draut. "We desperately need high-speed rail in this country," she says, meaning the taxpayers must be forced to finance it. The government gives companies billions of dollars to develop new trains. Guess who receives some of that money. GE. The problem is that government has no wealth of its own. All it can do is move wealth from where the market would have channeled it to where politicians want it. Who knows what would have happened if free people had the money that goes to high-speed rail? Maybe cancer would have been cured. "The private sector isn't going to cure cancer by itself," Draut says. Greedy drug companies aren't going to cure cancer? I asked. "They would have by now, if they could." People with a central planner's mentality have what F.A. Hayek called "the fatal conceit." I'd have thought the fall of the Soviet Union would have taught us that central planning is destructive, but the conceit of the central planners lives on. Maybe the problem isn't merely economic ignorance. Maybe it's something more sinister: a wish to keep the freeloading system going. After all, if politicians and business leaders admit that government cannot play a constructive role in the economy, what grounds would there be for subsidies, shelter from competitors and other privileges at the people's expense? The anti-free-market ideology is a vast rationalization for favoritism. The favors, of course, go those who are best at lobbying for them, those with connections and the means to make big campaign contributions. So the government pours billions of taxpayer dollars into wind farms that are half-owned ... by GE. I bet it's a waste of money. "Well, maybe it is," Draut says. "But it should be one thing that we, as a nation, are investing in so that we aren't left behind." This sort of nonsense provides intellectual cover for privilege and crony capitalism.